Old But Young At Heart Quotes & Sayings

Every time you close your eyes, regardless of where I am or where you are, I want you to remember this." His fingers laced with mine and then he pressed my hand against my own chest. "Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, alive or dead, young or old, my heart will always be with yours. Every beat you feel against your fingertips ... — Rachel Van Dyken

Each time they meet, they have more to discuss, and so they talk, quietly revealing themselves with and without language, their eyes moving like their hands over the plates of food between them....As he walks away from these visits, his heart almost bursts from happiness and regret. He would give anything to have made different choices. He is making those choices now, but he is forty-six years old. Sometimes he is haunted by the thought that it's all come too late. Other times he thinks, No, what is happening now could never have happened before; I was too young and too fearful. The paradox fascinates him--as the old loyalties desiccate and the danger intensifies, he feels lighter and younger than he has in years. — Karen Connelly

For bells are the voice of the church; They have tones that touch and search The hearts of young and old. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Love is about giving, about caring for the other person's welfare. Love is treating someone, in the Kantian sense, never as a means but as an end in themselves. Love is sacrifice, love is something you work at, something you build like a house or tend like a plant, brick by brick, drop by drop, day by day. Nonsense. Old wives' tales, old husbands' tales. That is affection they are talking about, that is companionship, that is charity, that is tickets for the Cancer Research Ball. You must ask the young if you want to know what love is. Only they are deep enough in it to describe. We older ones have clues and simulacra, we base our judgement, like pathologists do, on the dents and scars and sediments of hearts long kept in formaldehyde. It is the pulsing heart you want to probe: the pulsing, beating, leaping, dipping, fluttering heart of a seventeen-year-old. — A.P.

Turbulent childhood, adolescent daydreams in the drone of the bus's motor, mornings, unspoiled girls, beaches, young muscles always at the peak of their effort, evening's slight anxiety in a sixteen-year-old-heart, lust for life, fame, and ever the same sky through the years, unfailing in strength and light, itself insatiable, consuming one by one over a period of months the victims stretched out in the form of crosses on the beach at the deathlike hour of noon. — Albert Camus

My father was only thirty-one when he died of a heart attack, much too young for a father to die and leave his young wife with five rambunctious little kids to take care of. I was the youngest. Only a couple of months old when he died. — Lewis B. Smedes

... It is immensely moving when a mature man - no matter whether old or young in years - is aware of a responsibility with heart and soul. He then acts by following an ethic of responsibility and somewhere reaches the point where he says: 'Here I stand; I can do no other'. That is something genuinely human and moving. And every one of us who is not spiritually dead must realize the possibility of finding himself at some time in that position. In so far as this is true, an ethic of ultimate ends and an ethic of responsibility are not absolute contrasts but rather supplements, which only in unison constitute a genuine man - a man who can have the 'calling for politics'. — Max Weber

She was ten years old, after all. Alone and helpless and afraid. But here is truth, gentlefriends, no matter the number of suns in your sky. At the heart of it, two kinds of people live in this world or any other: those who flee and those who fight. Your kind has many terms for the latter sort. Berserker. Killer instinct. More balls than brains. And it shouldn't surprise you, knowing what little you know already, that in the face of this thug and his blade, and laden with memory of her father's execution never flinch never fear instead of wailing or breaking as another ten-year-old might have, young Mia gripped the stiletto she'd fished from the darkness, and slipped it straight up into the puppy-choker's eye. The — Jay Kristoff

Old age is the most precious time of life, the one nearest eternity. There are two ways of growing old. There are old people who are anxious and bitter, living in the past and illusion, who criticize everything that goes on around them. Young people are repulsed by them; they are shut away in their sadness and loneliness, shriveled up in themselves. But there are also old people with a child's heart, who have used their freedom from function and responsibility to find a new youth. They have the wonder of a child, but the wisdom of maturity as well. They have integrated their years of activity and so can live without being attached to power. Their freedom of heart and their acceptance of their limitations and weakness makes them people whose radiance illuminates the whole community. They are gentle and merciful, symbols of compassion and forgiveness. They become a community's hidden treasures, sources of unity and life. They are true contemplatives at the heart of community. — Jean Vanier

I have seen them stagger out of their movie palaces and blink their empty eyes in the face of reality once more, and stagger home, to read the Times, to find out what's going on in the world. I have vomited at their newspapers, read their literature, observed their customs, eaten their food, desired their women, gaped at their art. But I am poor, and my name ends with a soft vowel, and they hate me and my father, and my father's father, and they would have my blood and put me down, but they are old now, dying in the sun and in the hot dust of the road, and I am young and full of hope and love for my country and my times, and when I say Greaser to you it is not my heart that speaks, but the quivering of an old wound, and I am ashamed of the terrible thing I have done. — John Fante

An old man with something of the youth in him, may feel young in mind and heart only. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

You were faster than me. Better than me. I was too old and cautious. Any decent person who knos waht warfare is can never go into battle with a whole heart. But you didn't know. We made sure youo didn't know. You were reckless and brilliant and young. It's waht you were born for. — Orson Scott Card

But i'm old now, no longer fit for the fray, i'm even incapable of hating. I only feel sick at heart, irritable and exasperated. At night my head seems to be on fire with so many thoughts crowding in and i can't get any sleep ... Oh, if only i were young again! — Anton Chekhov

The young are of age when they twitter like the old; they are driven through school to learn the old song, and, when they have this by heart, they are declared of age. — Max Stirner

I begin my life. I live again. I meet a young girl called Valeria. She smiles easily. She laughs tender sounds that pull at my heart. I'm too young to be profound but she makes me feel so safe. So cherished. I am thirty years old. I bump into a woman I knew when she was a girl. Valeria looks annoyed to see me. She lives in the future. Where the world is turning. I live within the past. Where the people are trapped and screaming and alone. I live within the past when Valeria and I were in love. She's waiting for the cab to come, her foot tapping against the sidewalk. Her eyes glancing at her watch every few minutes. I'm eager to reunite our lives through some kind of friendship. I'm so eager to know her again, as she was when she was a child. But Valeria lives within the future. I live within the past. Have the two ever gotten along? Have they ever even met? — F.K. Preston

People say that teenagers don't know how to love like an adult. Part of me believes that, but I'm not an adult and so I have nothing to compare it to. But I do believe it's probably different. I'm sure there's more substance in the love between two adults then there is between two teenagers. There's probably more maturity, more respect, more responsibility. But no matter how different the substance of a love might be at different ages in a person's life, I know that love still has to weigh the same. You feel that weight on your shoulders and in your stomach and on your heart no matter how old you are. — Colleen Hoover

In my opinion humanity is being prayed upon, I mean as a species. Not only by old satanic families like the Rothschilds and Rockefellers, Collins, Dupont, Warner, Russell, the world's monarchies, the Vatican. But also prayed upon by these family's employees, by governments, by the military, by banking institutions, by academia. So who does that leave? That's all the people who aren't wealthy, aren't connected, aren't educated, who are easy to manipulate, are easy to persecute and who don't believe any of the issues which you cover on Red Ice. And that's a problem. And that breaks my heart. — Sean Young

To have the experience I did as a child, I would have to be a physically different being, one with whom I share nearly nothing. On a cellular level, aside from the neurons of my cerebral cortex and a few other stranglers in my heart and eyes, I am not him. — Thomm Quackenbush

Whatever we are physically ... male or female, young or old, strong or weak, ill or healthy ... Those things matter much less than what you have inside your heart. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things are merely like the glass that contains a lamp ... Useful, but you are the light inside. Shine, my friend. Shine. — Jose N. Harris

Little Bit.
The loathsome nickname proved just how hopeless her situation had been, how pathetic, but neither the name nor the glaring age difference had deterred her heart, because with one playful wink and one slow smile, young Arabella had been a goner.
Sadly, twenty-two-year-old Ella wasn't that much better. — Rachel Harris

Let us All make the whole WORLD a better place,
pursue our dreams...bond LOVE to the spirit, embrace the young and old.
LOVE... creates justice, peace and freedom.
I believe humans are good at heart they are there
to protect not destroy.
We must help humankind to overcome human evil
with hopeful aspirations, power to inspire and dream...find our own inner light where
tomorrow belongs to a peaceful WORLD
Marialuisa — Marialuisa Marino

Inanna spoke:
"What I tell you
Let the singer weave into song.
What I tell you,
Let it flow from ear to mouth,
Let it pass from old to young:

My vulva, the horn,
The Boat of Heaven,
Is full of eagerness like the young moon.
My untilled land lies fallow.

As for me, Inanna,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will plow my high field?
Who will plow my wet ground?

As for me, the young woman,
Who will plow my vulva?
Who will station the ox there?
Who will plow my vulva?"

Dumuzi replied:
"Great Lady, the king will plow your vulva.
I, Dumuzi the King, will plow your vulva."

Inanna:
"Then plow my vulva, man of my heart!
Plow my vulva! — Diane Wolkstein

Twenty years back, yes; at this time of my life, no. For, as I draw closer and closer to the end, I travel in the circle, nearer and nearer to the beginning. It seems to be one of the kind smoothings and preparings of the way. My heart is touched now, by many remembrances that had long fallen asleep, of my pretty young mother (and I so old!), and by many associations of the days when what we call the World was not so real with me, and my faults were not confirmed in me. — Charles Dickens

The old women in black at early Mass in winter
are a problem for him. He could tell by their eyes
they have seen Christ. They make the kernel
of his being and the clarity around it
seem meager, as though he needs girders
to hold up his unusable soul. But he chooses
against the Lord. He will not abandon his life.
Not his childhood, not the ninety-two bridges
across the two rivers of his youth. Nor the mills
along the banks where he became a young man
as he worked. The mills are eaten away, and eaten
again by the sun and its rusting. He needs them
even though they are gone, to measure against.
The silver is worn down to the brass underneath
and is the better for it. He will gauge
by the smell of concrete sidewalks after night rain.
He is like an old ferry dragged on to the shore,
a home in its smashed grandeur, with the giant beams
and joists. Like a wooden ocean out of control.
A beached heart. A cauldron of cooling melt. — Jack Gilbert

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty. Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old. — Franz Kafka

But Fr Gaunt was so clipped and trim he had no antennae at all for grief. He was like a singer who knows the words and can sing, but cannot sing the song as conceived in the heart of the composer. Mostly he was dry. He spoke over young and old with the same dry music. But — Sebastian Barry

Nature is full of freaks, and now puts an old head on young shoulders, and then takes a young heart heating under fourscore winters. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I'm 48 now and I would like to have another baby. I would love to because of all the things I have learned. It would be like starting all over again. But am I too old? I'm young at heart and I would be different this time round. — Brigitte Nielsen

The death of Walt Disney is a loss to all the people of the world. In everything he did, Walt had an intuitive way of reaching out and touching the hearts and mind of young and old alike. His entertainment was an international language.
For more than 40 years, people have looked to Walt Disney for the finest quality in family entertainment. There is no way to replace Walt Disney. He was an extraordinary man. Perhaps there will never be another like him ... The world will always be a better place because Walt Disney was its master showman. — Roy O. Disney

Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl that she used to be. But a great artist-a master-and that is what Auguste Rodin was-can look at an old woman, protray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her. Look at her, Ben. Growing old doesn't matter to you and me; we were never meant to be admired-but it does to them. — Robert A. Heinlein

There are many tired gardeners but I've seldom met old gardeners. I know many elderly gardeners but the majority are young at heart. Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized. The one absolute of gardeners is faith. Regardless of how bad past gardens have been, every gardener believes that next year's will be better. It is easy to age when there is nothing to believe in, nothing to hope for, gardeners, however, simply refuse to grow up. — Allan Armitage

I remember the first time going to St. Jude. I didn't like going there because the children were ill, and it just broke my heart. It makes you test your religion when you see something like that. But the Lord doesn't want just old people. You know, He wants some young people, too, and good people. He takes care of them. He takes care of them. — Lee Trevino

when i was little i used to save my baths for later. id come back to them before bed and sit in the old cold bathwater and run cool water out of the shower and pretend i was hiding in vietnam and it was raining. i was young when i did this and am not sure why i was thinking about vietnam or what i knew about it. i did this when i was older too. im thinking about doing it again tonight.

you are running out of time to get everything you want exactly the way you want it. (this is a joke.) most things are going to be left unsaid. (this is not a joke.) a few weeks ago my mom sent me an email with pictures of eagles that said "how about these eagles." she visits my cousin in jail once a month. that seems like a lot for an aunt. he is in jail because he shot his girlfriend in the face but they are still together. she told me once that she knew in her heart that he is guilty but now she claims she never said that. — Heiko Julien

How beautiful the old Glen was, in its August ripeness, with its chain of bowery old homesteads, tilled meadows and quiet gardens. The western sky was like a great golden pearl. Far down the harbour was frosted with a dawning moonlight. The air was full of exquisite sounds - sleepy robin whistles, wonderful, mournful, soft murmurs of wind in the twilit trees, rustle of aspen poplars talking in silvery whispers and shaking their dainty, heart-shaped leaves, lilting young laughter from the windows of rooms where the girls were making ready for the dance. The world was steeped in maddening loveliness of sound and colour. He would think only of these things and of the deep, subtle joy they gave him. — L.M. Montgomery

Parent may hinder their children's marriage; but children cannot interfere with the insane acts of their parents in their second childhood. — Honore De Balzac

Joanna, like her daughters, was neither old nor young, and yet their physical appearances corresponded to their particular talents. Depending on the situation, Freya could be anywhere from sixteen to twenty-three years of age, the first blush of Love, while Ingrid, keeper of the Hearth, looked and acted anywhere from twenty-seven to thirty-five; and since Wisdom came from experience, even if in her heart she might feel like a schoolgirl, Joanna's features were those of an older woman in her early sixties. — Melissa De La Cruz

Do no harmful actions, do not become attached to the cycle of death and rebirth, show kindness, respect the old and have compassion for the young, do not have a heart that rejects or a heart that covets and have no worry or sadness in your heart. This is what is called enlightenment. Do not seek it elsewhere. — Dogen

Then sing, young hearts that are full of cheer, With never a thought of sorrow; The old goes out, but the glad young year Comes merrily in tomorrow. — Emily J. Miller

The young bamboo can be easily bent, but the full grown bamboo breaks when it is bent with force. It is easy to bend the young heart towards God, but the untrained heart of the old escapes the hold whenever it is so drawn — Ramakrishna

You're never too old to go after the dreams God has put in your heart. And for the record, you're never too young either. Age is never a valid excuse. — Mark Batterson

Life strove mightily to exile orthodoxy, hospitalize heresy, and trap humanity into stupidity. It was an accumulation of used bandages soiled with layers of blood and pus. Life was the daily changing of the bandages of the heart that made the incurably sick, young and old alike, cry out in pain. — Yukio Mishima

Wherever I am, whatever I'm doing, alive or dead, young or old, my heart will always be with yours. Every beat you feel against your fingertips ... " His fingers tapped against my chest, once, twice. " ... is me calling out to you. It's you returning the call. It's us talking, communicating, bonding, sharing, Living
Kiersten, it's us living. — Rachel Van Dyken

The earth has grown old with its burden of care, but at Christmas it always is young, the heart of the jewel burns lustrous and fair, and its soul full of music breaks the air, when the song of angels is sung. — Phillips Brooks

Tatiana realized she was too young to hide well what was in her heart but
old enough to know that her heart was in her eyes. — Paullina Simons

In the middle of a conversation, she'll frequently say something like, "Young people are heartless, they don't have any respect anymore." I nod agreement in hopes that she'll stop right there, but secretly I'm convinced that the heart is the same as it's always been; there's simply less hypocrisy, that's all. Young people aren't naturally selfish, any more than old folks are naturally wise. Your age doesn't have anything to do with whether you're sensitive or shallow; it's a question of the path your life takes. — Susanna Tamaro

This is Darrow, Inadequately scrawled, with his young, old heart, And his drawl, and his infinite paradox And his sadness, and kindness, And his artist sense that drives him to shape his life To something harmonious, even against the schemes of God. — Edgar Lee Masters

I met a man; broken as can be,
A smile upon his face; no shoes upon his feet,
He said one thing " young one , you listen clear"
The choices you make now; will always reappear,
Live to your heart but do wrong to none,
Because when your old like me; you'll remember all you have done. — Nikki Rowe

With heart at rest I climbed the citadel's
Steep height, and saw the city as from a tower,
Hospital, brothel, prison, and such hells,
Where evil comes up softly like a flower.
Thou knowest, O Satan, patron of my pain,
Not for vain tears I went up at that hour;
But like an old sad faithful lecher, fain
To drink delight of that enormous trull
Whose hellish beauty makes me young again.
Whether thou sleep, with heavy vapors full,
Sodden with day, or, new appareled, stand
In gold-laced veils of evening beautiful,
I love thee, infamous city! Harlots and
Hunted have pleasures of their own to give,
The vulgar herd can never understand. — Charles Baudelaire

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful-
The eye of the little god, four cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish. — Sylvia Plath

I am here because I am the one that must love Peter so much that he can feel worthy, worthy enough to bear to let the goodness of Young Valentine flow into him, making him whole, making him Ender. Not Ender the Xenocide and Andrew the Speaker for the Dead, guilt and compassion mingled in one shattered, broken, unmendable heart, but Ender Wiggin the four-year-old boy whose life was twisted and broken when he was too young to defend himself. Wang-mu was the one who could give Peter permission to become the man that child should have grown up to be, if the world had been good. — Orson Scott Card

Gone are the days when my heart was young and gay,
Gone are my friends from the cotton fields away,
Gone from the earth to a better land I know,
I hear their gentle voices calling Old Black Joe. — Stephen Foster

So, I don't know. I think so. It's all in the heart, whatever keeps you that way. Keeps you forever young. Forever young doesn't necessarily mean that you don't grow old, but you just have some contact with what put you where you are. You know, keep some type of contact. Anyway ... — Bob Dylan

Now look here, old friend," I said. "I know your bally heart is broken and all that, and at some future time I shall be delighted to hear all about it, but - "
"I didn't come to talk about that."
"No? Good egg!"
"The past," said young Bingo, "is dead. Let us say no more about it."
"Right-o!"
"I have been wounded to the very depths of my soul, but don't speak about it."
"I won't."
"Ignore it. Forget it."
"Absolutely!"
I hadn't seen him so dashed reasonable for days. — P.G. Wodehouse

This is a young country," Kennedy went on, his voice getting louder, "founded by young men ... and still young in heart ... The world is changing, the old ways will not do ... It is time for a new generation of leadership to cope with new problems and new opportunities." Even Kennedy's enemies agreed that his speech that day was stirring. He turned Truman's challenge around: the issue was not his inexperience but the older generation's monopoly on power. — Robert Greene

To sit beside the board and drink good wine And watch the turf smoke coiling from the fire And feel content and wisdom in your heart, This is the best of life; when we are young We long to tread a way none trod before, But find the excellent old way through love And through the care of children to the hour Forbidding Fate and Time and Change goodbye. — William Butler Yeats

Young love sucked. Old love wasn't much easier, but at least you had some scar tissue built up around your heart to make it hurt a little less. — Tere Michaels

People forget that old women were young once, but d'you think we old women forget? In my heart, I'm still thirty. — Megan Chance

At the time I now write of, Father Mapple was in the hardy winter of a healthy old age; that sort of old age which seems merging into a second flowering youth, for among all the fissures of his wrinkles, there shone certain mild gleams of a newly developing bloom - the spring verdure peeping forth even beneath February's snow. — Herman Melville

In the world of dating, everyone seems to fall into one of the following six camps. Sometimes they straddle two. Pick which camp you're mostly in. Camp I Wish: You don't date and you wish you did. Camp Who Cares?: You don't date and you really don't care. Camp This Rocks!: You really enjoy dating and you wonder why everyone else doesn't. Camp Help!: You're stuck in a bad dating relationship you can't get out of. Camp Never Again: You just had your heart broken and don't want to start dating again. Camp Hanging Out: You don't really date, you just sort of hang out. You see dating as an old-fashioned ritual. Camp Curious: You're too young to date, but you're really curious about it. — Sean Covey

The happiest adults are those who never buried old toys or abandoned imaginary friends. — Richelle E. Goodrich

Whether we be young or old,Our destiny, our being's heart and home,Is with infinitude, and only there;With hope it is, hope that can never die,Effort and expectation, and desire,And something evermore about to be. — William Wordsworth

When I go to Florida for Christmas I always take my nieces and nephews out on excursions, ... I become like a big kid again. We go on all the big rides at the theme parks or I stick them in go-karts where their feet can't quite reach the pedals. I think that if you can continue to have the child at heart you may grow old physically but you will stay young mentally. — John Barrowman

The only true retirement is that of the heart; the only true leisure is the repose of the passions. To such persons it makes little difference whether they are young or old; and they die as they have lived, with graceful resignation. — William Hazlitt

Who is not liberal when young, does not have a heart. Who is not conservative when old, does not have a brain. — Winston Churchill

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away — Douglas MacArthur

Instead, he uttered another complaint. "You're allowing a dusty old book to control your destiny!" A book controlling me? Heat shot to my temples. I shifted in my saddle to face him fully. "Understand this, Your Majesty, there's been a lot of effort to control my life, but it hasn't come from books! Look a little further back! A kingdom that betrothed me to an unknown prince controlled my destiny. A Komizar who commandeered my voice controlled my destiny. And a young king who would force protection on me thought he would control my destiny. Make no mistake about it, Rafe. I am choosing my destiny now - not a book, nor a man or a kingdom. If my goals and heart coincide with something in an old dusty book, so be it. I choose to serve this goal, just as you are free to choose yours!" I lowered my voice and added with cold certainty, "I promise you, King Jaxon, if Morrighan falls, Dalbreck will be next, and then every other kingdom on the continent until the Komizar has consumed them all. — Mary E. Pearson

[T]he young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed - love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands. — William Faulkner

While Celia was gone he walked up and down remembering what he had originally felt about Dorothea's engagement, and feeling a revival of his disgust at Mr. Brooke's indifference. If Cadwallader-- if every one else had regarded the affair as he, Sir James, had done, the marriage might have been hindered. It was wicked to let a young girl blindly decide her fate in that way, without any effort to save her. Sir James had long ceased to have any regrets on his own account: his heart was satisfied with his engagement to Celia. But he had a chivalrous nature (was not the disinterested service of woman among the ideal glories of old chivalry?): his disregarded love had not turned to bitterness; its death had made sweet odors-- floating memories that clung with a consecrating effect to Dorothea. He could remain her brotherly friend, interpreting her actions with generous trustfulness. — George Eliot

It seems to me that Mr. Sculley understood the very nucleus of existence, that he had kept his young eyes and young heart even though his body had grown old. He saw straight through to the cosmic order of things, and he knew that life is not held only in flesh and bone, but also in those objects - a good, faithful pair of shoes; a reliable car; a pen that always works; a bike that has taken you many a mile ... — Robert R. McCammon

Don't say you'se ole. You'se uh lil girl baby all de time. God made it so you spent yo' ole age first wid somebody else, and saved up yo' young girl days to spend wid me. — Zora Neale Hurston

Quiet, moving, masterfully crafted. Such are the nine stories in Venus in the Afternoon. Tehila Lieberman writes with precision, restraint, with a compassionate heart. She inhabits her characters, young or old, men or women, honestly, but without judgment, until they rise off the page and stand before us breathing and alive. New York, the Atacama desert, Amsterdam or Cuzco in Peru, the settings in Venus in the Afternoon are just as varied as the lives which they contain. A wonderful collection, one that will stay in your mind long after you have bid it goodbye. — Miroslav Penkov

Then his lips caress mine. It's only a brush, but the warmth overheats every part of me. Leaning back, my elbow bumps into the power button on the dryer and the old appliance starts moving. Spinning. Spinning like my head. Like my heart. — Lauren Hammond